Darya Kozyreva

Darya Kozyreva is an outspoken activist who has opposed Russia’s war in Ukraine since her teenage years. She was briefly detained in August 2022 for tearing pro-war symbols off military vehicles, but did not face further charges as she was a minor. She was detained again in December 2022 for anti-war graffiti, and in the same month, charges were filed against her for a social media post she had made in March. In January 2023, she was expelled from her university because of the post, which she had made in high school. In February 2024, she glued an excerpt of a politically inflected poem by Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko to a statue of him in St. Petersburg in an anti-war action. She was arrested for this and remained in pre-trial detention until February 2025. In April 2025, she was sentenced to two years and 8 months in prison for “discrediting the army,” and was fined in June on the same charge. The fine was overturned in December. In March 2026, she was released from prison.